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FEATURE: Media
ownership conflict charged by fear of China
By Annie Huang / AP, TAIPEI
A Taiwanese tycoon with big business interests in China is causing alarm as he
tries to expand his media empire.
Want Want China Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) is trying to purchase a
cable TV network system in a US$2.4 billion deal that would significantly
bolster his influence in the nation, but regulators have held up approval of the
deal for almost 18 months amid concern that the acquisition would give the group
too much media influence.
Tsai purchased the China Times stable of media outlets for US$650 million in
2008. It includes the flagship China Times daily newspaper, China Television Co
(CTV), and the CTiTV cable news station.
Adding to the controversy, a rival media mogul has been attacking Tsai over his
close ties to China. Jimmy Lai (黎智英), publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper,
says Want Want’s China business interests — the company’s fortune originated
from food sales in China — and his pro-Beijing views should scuttle his
application to acquire Taiwan’s China Network Systems (CNS). The broadcaster
provides cable service to 1.18 million households, or a quarter of the total
nationwide.
Lai is not the only one with doubts. Many Taiwanese fear that China is using big
Taiwanese business to advance its agenda of gradually bringing Taiwan under its
sway.
Journalism professor Kuang Chung-hsiang (管中祥) of National Chung Cheng University
said that media purchases in Taiwan tend to be made more for reasons of personal
influence than profit because of the relatively small size of the market, and
that seems to be the case with the CNS deal.
“Tsai apparently hopes that his influence in Taiwan will bolster his stature in
China to aid his mainland business,” he said.
Tsai raised hackles earlier this year when he told a Washington Post reporter
that China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters near Beijing’s Tiananmen
Square did not produce anywhere near the number of casualties attributed to it
by international media reports, including those from Taiwan.
He also said that Taiwan’s unification with China was inevitable.
Lai, whose anti-China views have made him a pariah in Beijing, has pilloried the
proposed CNS acquisition in the pages of Apple Daily. A recent headline declared
“Taiwan cannot afford to have only the voice of Want Want left.” It was
accompanied by a caricature of a smiling Tsai sitting next to a pile of outsized
gold coins, representing his various media outlets.
Other Apple attacks have included accusations that the China Times has given
undue coverage to Chinese purchasing missions in Taiwan, and has allowed itself
to be used as a platform for Chinese advertising that presents itself as news,
recently ruled illegal by regulators.
Tsai outbid Lai for the China Times Group when he purchased it four years ago.
China Times has hit back at the Apple Daily, which is best known for gory crime
coverage, suggestive graphics, and reports on pop stars and other entertainment
icons.
It has accused the paper of a slew of erroneous reports, including an allegedly
slanderous expose which it said caused the suicide of the head of a local
securities firm.
“Look at how many Taiwanese he has harmed,” China Times wrote about Lai,
depicting him as a cavalier hitman, with a hammer in one hand and a mace in the
other.
Apple Daily and its weekly Next Magazine are among a handful of profitable news
outlets nationwide. The group launched Next TV last year, and CNS’s new buyer
could have the power to decide whether it will be allowed to go on air because
of its ability to control access — through fee deals or punitive administrative
action.
While many in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) support Tsai’s proposed
takeover — the China Times Group normally gushes over KMT political policies —
some do not.
KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said that while many Taiwanese have “reasonable
doubts” about the group’s editorial independence, an even larger concern was the
possible emergence of a “super media group.”
She said that cable news programs in Taiwan — even those normally at odds with
China Times editorials — have held off from criticizing the CNS acquisition
because they are scared that if it is approved, they could be forced off the air
by price hikes or other punitive measures.
Want Want rejects such worries as fanciful.
It says the Fair Trade Commission ruled a year ago that its proposed CNS buyout
would not constitute an unfair media monopoly, and has called on the National
Communications Commission, the ultimate arbiter of the merger bid, to make an
early decision on the case.
Want Want official Chao Yu-pei (趙育培), who is handling the deal, said news
outlets of all formats under the group’s control currently have 18 percent of
the Taiwan market, significantly below what would be considered a monopoly in
the West.
“Taiwan is a democracy with freedom of speech,” he said. “Everyone has his or
her own views and is unlikely to be swayed by the views of any single media
group.”
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